Hays, Kansas

Today was our penultimate (I love that word) day on the road. We started in Denver, spent a few hours in the Tattered Cover and at Twist and Shout records, then hit the Interstate for Kansas. There was mad rain on the highway, but the familiarity of the landscape was extremely welcome.
Now we're spending our last night in Hays, Kansas, and I have accidentally demagnetized like my sixth key card (oops). Oh well. There aren't a lot of photos from today, but I'll post what I have when we get home tomorrow--I don't imagine I'll be shooting too many photos out the window in Eastern Kansas, because I see it fairly often and stuff. But we'll have to wait and see for sure, I suppose!

Again-ver

That was a pretty unsuccessful pun on the proper noun "Denver," huh. About as unsuccessful as our day was successful. This morning, I woke up and went for a run around Grand Junction, got a few rolls of film developed by the friendly folks at Snap Photo (which I'm posting here on Flickr), and hit the road with my dad (who drove the entire day, and rather attentively, if you can believe that). We stopped in Glenwood Springs and walked around town a bit, which was cool. There was a textile store which donates its profits to improving living standards for developmentally delayed adults, some of whom work at the store as weavers.There was also a sweet bookstore, Booktrain, and a tasty little bistro called Daily Bread, where we ate some Polish food and some artichokes.

Aside from our adventures in Glenwood Springs (which, by the way, it's totally legal to sell firearm ammunition at Rite-Aid; who knew?), we spent a lot of time simply driving through the mountains. My dad told me about working in Georgetown after he'd been fired from his first job in radio, and the Wichita State plane crash (Wikipedia, again, is a lovely thing), which happened right after my dad moved to the area.

There were plenty of mountain storms, and the temperature got as low as 46 degrees Fahrenheit while we were cruising to Denver (where we find ourselves this evening), which is nuts considering that it was 102 degrees yesterday in Utah.

But enough talk of the weather. (The Weather?)

 

-From Ancient Melodies of the Future (2001)

No but really, here are a few photos from today.

El Padre in Glenwood Springs

Glenwood Springs, again

Brindyl the dog (according to her collar, that is)

Colorado River rafters

This exists on I-70

Eagle, Colorado (I wish there were more cows in this photo)

Moody sky

Really moody sky

Incredibly, unbelievably moody sky

Grand Junction, Colorado

Yet another day of driving, this time across Utah and into Colorado, where we ended up in Grand Junction for the night. I walked around town for a bit when we got here and happened upon a one-hour photo place (those still even exist?) called Snap Photo. I've only shot like two rolls of 35mm on this trip, but I'm going to stop by in the morning and see if I can't get them developed before we leave town because I have a hard time being patient. Fingers crossed!

But today was a really nice day. My dad and I crossed the Great Salt Flats and visited Saltair (which is not actually the original building). Some brief background, in case you're in the dark like I was:

Saltair was originally built in the late 1800's as an amusement park on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Misfortune (and fire) befell the place again and again, and after reconstruction and several revival attempts, it burned down for good thanks to arson in the 1960's. A concert hall, modeled after the original architecture of the Saltair, now sits about a mile down the shore from where the original structure was first constructed. If that's not enough history for you, Wikipedia's there to help.

Anywho, we stopped there because--and this interest is fairly prototypical of my family--the park was used in the 1962 film Carnival of Souls, which is a wonderfully eerie gem that's been lost in the annals of horror history. Its influence on contemporary cinema is fairly remarkable; George Romero once even said that it was the film that inspired him to make Night of the Living Dead, which ghouls gave way to the zombies Romero crafted in Dawn of the Dead. Which is basically a roundabout way of saying that zombies, as they stand as a contemporary cultural phenomenon, might not exist were it not for this film. And all of that disregarded, it's just a darn-good horror film that scares my pants off every time.

Anyway, if I did a good job selling it at all, here's a poor-quality version of the full movie on YouTube, courtesy of the public domain:

After we left the moderately-depressing site of Saltair, we passed through Salt Lake City, saw some mountain storms, and listened to The Association, which was one of my dad's favorite groups back in the day. I'd never really listened to them before, but they have some super-smooth melodies and harmonies. It was rewarding to see the look on my dad's face when I pulled up their music on the stereo, because he hadn't heard them since he was in school. Here's a video of them performing the song "Along Comes Mary" on the Smothers Brothers; it's pretty wonderful if you ask me.

 

-From And Then...Along Comes The Association (1966)

And that's all I've got for today, so here are some photos from the road!

Salt Flats, looking South from I-80

I swear there are ghouls living here

Minarets!

I-80, just west of Salt Lake City

Utah Highway 6

Just East of Wellington, Utah

Utah Highway 6, looking West

Wendover, Utah

We made it! After four hundred miles on Interstate 80 East, we've set up camp in Wendover, Utah for the evening. We thought our hotel was in Nevada for the first few hours we were here, until my dad asked the clerk and found out that we'd lost a precious hour in driving a quarter-mile past the state line to our hotel. It's funny how arbitrary things like time zones and state lines are.

Anyway, there's not much to tell about our day. My dad stomached a lot of my music (as in No Doubt and Patience and Prudence and lots of other artists). After that, we also listened to Pink Moon by Nick Drake together. If you've never heard it and are interested, the full album is below. It's one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, and will always probably remind me of car rides with my dad.

Some background, since I'm feeling verbose. When I was in maybe fifth grade, I got one of those silly music encyclopedias that Rolling Stone publishes. Flipping through it, I found the entry on Nick Drake and became intrigued. After showing the entry to my dad, who was also unfamiliar with his music, he took me to Best Buy and bought me Pink Moon for ten dollars. We went back out to the car, a little nervous to listen to the CD--we'd never listened to Nick Drake before and knew nothing about him except that he'd made this album before he died--but, as soon as the title track came on, we simply looked at each other and smiled. And for years after that, we'd listen to that album in the car together.

 

 Pink Moon (1972)

So, to end that major digression, Pink Moon felt like appropriate music for driving alone together through the rocky and sparse Nevada countryside.

We also talked (imagine that) about everything from Ernest Hemingway's post-war insecurities to Willa Cather's treatment of the Midwestern terrain to westward settlers journeying on the California trail.

Oh, and we saw some really lovely things out the windows. My Internet connection right now is dreadfully slow, so I'm afraid these photos may have to be without captions for a day or two,

My dad wasn't even irked that I pulled over to look at this dust devil

We were told there would be geysers

I often dream of trains

Reno Dakota

Being in Reno, Nevada reminds me of "Reno Dakota." If you're unfamiliar with the Magnetic Fields, here's the short (and fairly biting) little song:

Reno Dakota there's not an iota of kindness in you
You know you enthrall me and yet you don't call me
It's making me blue
Pantone 292

Reno Dakota I'm reaching my quota of tears for the year
Alas and alack you just don't call me back
You have just disappeared
It makes me drink beer

I know you're a recluse; you know that's no excuse, Reno
That's just a ruse
Do not play fast and loose with my heart

Reno Dakota I'm no Nino Rota; I don't know the score
Have I annoyed you or is there a boy who-- well he's just a whore
I've had him before
It makes me drink more

-From 69 Love Songs, Vol. 1 (1999)

**********

There's a really great story behind this song; apparently Reno Dakota was an actual dude who Stephin Merrit tried to pick up at a bar. They got him to sit down for a little interview, where he explained the song and sang a pretty clever response:

It's a bit sad, really, though I've gotta say he seems to have been a really great sport about the whole thing. Which I guess is understandable. I mean, he did get a song named after him.

**********

This entire digression of a post is merely my attempt to enjoy my morning coffee and to share something that I liked before we leave Reno (the location) and head eastward.

Reno, Nevada

Here was today, in outline format:

• Woke up, drank coffee, and hung out with the family
• Visited my brother-in-law at his work, NHS, where he kindly gave us a spirited tour of everything (including their skate museum and their offices)
• Said goodbye to everyone in Santa Cruz (which was no fun at all, my sister and her husband and their son being three of the raddest people around)
• Dropped my other sister off at the airport in San Jose so she could return to Kansas City
• Drove through mad traffic all up in Stockton and the like
• Passed through the Sierra Nevadas
• Saw Donner Pass and Truckee Lake--I tried my hardest but still couldn't put myself in a settler's shoes; the terrain was rugged and unforgiving and terrifying--and I'm a contemporary twenty-year-old driving in a car on the luxury of a paved interstate, so I can't even imagine trying to cross the Sierra Nevadas with a covered wagon on mere paths
• Ended up in Reno, Nevada
• Went to Denny's with El Padre, where our waitress was named Yo Yo
• Had absolute treasures of conversations with Dad all along the way

So yeah. It was a pretty good day.

Independent Trucks from Independent trucks

San Jose, 880 North

Cattle and ominous smoke in Sacramento, looking East

El Padre piense

Sierra Nevada sunset

Rocky Mountain Stories

It's been a great, tiring day. Imagine that. We just listened to my dad tell one of his signature Rocky Mountain stories to put our nephew to sleep, and it was so special. He even recorded it so our nephew can listen to it again years into the future.
More on those stories later; now I desperately need to sleep in preparation for our Eastern return tomorrow!

Santa Cruz

Man oh man. Today was perfect and I am totally enamored of my family. They are seriously wonderful in so many ways. My big sister, for instance, took us to the beach with our (sweet and cuddly and imaginative) nephew today. She's a teacher, and while we were there we ran into one of her former students, who told me, "you're so lucky to be related to her." That about says everything.

But because today was more concerned with quality family time than taking tons of non-family photos, I have nothing more to post (and, as you may have already guessed, am too tired to write much of substance), so here is a poem by H.D.

Evening

The light passes

from ridge to ridge,

from flower to flower—

the hepaticas, wide-spread

under the light

grow faint—

the petals reach inward,

the blue tips bend

toward the bluer heart

and the flowers are lost.

The cornel-buds are still white,

but shadows dart

from the cornel-roots—

black creeps from root to root,

each leaf

cuts another leaf on the grass,

shadow seeks shadow,

then both leaf

and leaf-shadow are lost.

-From Collected Poems, 1912-1944

Memory Believes

"...before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." -William Faulkner

Today was another big day and I think words are a bit past me right now. But we made it down Highway 1 and it was even more wondrous than I'd anticipated, even if every photo I tried to take seemed to come out blurry. It's the subjective memory that truly counts, and that's what I'll be holding close in my mind for years to come.

Tomorrow we get to hang out with my admirable-beyond-description big sister and her husband and son! Hooray!

Clichéd visions of America in the Golden Gate

California One

Santa Cruisin'